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Delta puts brakes on return to post-COVID normality

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Jeeze I feel lucky to be in a place where the vaccine was readily available.

12 ( +16 / -4 )

The vaccines int he US are working. Yes, this variant is highly transmissible, however the real items to note are hospitalizations and deaths. Where vaccinations are low (under 50%), hospitalizations go up.

https://www.businessinsider.com/graphs-states-low-vaccine-rate-rise-covid-hospitalization-delta-us-2021-7?op=1

6 ( +10 / -4 )

The Chinese have really done a number on the world.

5 ( +19 / -14 )

@Burning Bush

Are the vaccines working as advertised?

You ask a logical question. I would say yes.

The vaccines are not working to stop spread of the virus and do not prevent someone from getting Covid or passing it to others.

What appears to be happening is the vaccines are reducing the amount of emergency room visits by an infected person and are doing a good job of preventing people from dying.

I am skeptical of the vaccines due to the pace of development and uncertainty of long term effects. I am wondering when one of the vaccines will be approved by the FDA and not authorized for emergency use. They are now saying this should happen in September or October.

1 ( +10 / -9 )

Something like 99.2% of the new cases last month were with unvaccinated people. So yeah, I'd say it's working. Will it continue to work or will there be long-term side effects? They jury is still out.

But as of today the numbers are saying 99.2%. That's the risk you're taking.

10 ( +11 / -1 )

If you have evidence that the Delta virus is less deadly, please post the link here.

The Delta variant actually seems less deadly, transmission is just it going round and not necessarily that it's doing anything to the host

5 ( +10 / -5 )

eyeblack:

The Chinese have really done a number on the world.

Yeah, by 'releasing' it into their country first and watching their own people drop dead.

8 ( +11 / -3 )

For a brief second I thought it meant the airline company.

Eyeblack: "The Chinese have really done a number on the world."

China is not responsible for each country's reaction, and there's a reason some have faired well while others have had disaster on a massive scale -- poor leadership. It's like when anti-vaxxers blame China for how Covid has ravaged their nation; it's THEIR fault, not China's. The US and Japan are prime examples in mismanagement -- prioritizing politics, Games, and ultimately, pointing the finger at everyone else. Wasn't China that killed 600,000 Americans -- it was the former WH's reaction to Covid. Wasn't China that fumbled the ball in Japan, it was Abe, Suga, and vested interests in a certain international event about to take place. It wasn't China that saw Taiwan and NZ have extreme success in controlling the outbreak, it was the Taiwanese and NZ governments. Just a few examples.

6 ( +12 / -6 )

Reckless,

one characteristic of coronaviruses is that different coronaviruses can exchange genetic information by recombination with each other. It’s their form of sexual reproduction (without having to go out to dinner and a movie first). Paramecium also do this.

By this exchange of RNA, the underlying genetic architecture changes and new characteristics are acquired. Can it be forced in a lab? Yes. But it happens in nature all the time.

1 ( +6 / -5 )

@Reckless, It's the CCP, not China. The CCP should be wiped off the face of the earth.

3 ( +6 / -3 )

Pfizer, BioNTech to seek authorization for COVID booster shot as Delta variant spreads

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/pfizer-ask-fda-authorize-booster-dose-covid-vaccine-delta-variant-spreads-2021-07-08/

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

The question is not if those vaccines currently work 100%, but if they work also at the 5th, 10th or 20th refreshing injection. Now you still laugh and party and don’t care, but in 5, 10, 20 years? You’ll very fast reach higher vulnerable age groups and your body’s physical condition also continuously deteriorates, now resisting easily with strong immune response, vaccination or not, but one day sooner or later not anymore capable to resist the virus loads’ attacks. And you guess it, one of those errors and it surely may be your last.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

The problem is if not enough people get the vaccine, we'll never get herd immunity. The virus will be allowed to mutate and ultimately breach the vaccine protection.

Get vaccinated people! It's not just for you!

4 ( +8 / -4 )

The Chinese have really done a number on the world.

True, but they are superior to any other nation in the world in controlling and solving the problem. If we could somehow avoid being 8 year olds whining “he started it” and instead focus on combatting the virus through vaccination and measures, the pandemic could have ended and would end sooner. The economy is losing trillions with every state of emergency. Japan is just going in circles.

You can always go back and call China out on this but you need to be out of the woods first.

-6 ( +1 / -7 )

Everyone's going on about 'cases' but that just means someone testing positive with a symptom from the ever-growing list of things that are supposedly related

Yes, because people actually like to prevent things instead of working 10 times as hard to solve them once present, for that following the number of cases is necessary.

The Delta variant actually seems less deadly, transmission is just it going round and not necessarily that it's doing anything to the host

On what data you make that conclusion? obviously you are not just comparing the effects of previous strains on naive population and of the delta strain on a population with a large part of the vulnerable population already immune thanks to the vaccines, right? that would be a terribly obvious mistake so nobody actually interested in knowing the risk from any variant would do it.

More fear-mongering, just get on with your life

If you can't prove the experts wrong about what they say you can't just say it is fear mongering, that would be reserved to people that have repeatedly proven false, like antivaxxers and their endless promotion of unjustified imaginary fears of vaccines producing a lot of things that we never get to see.

3 ( +6 / -3 )

Stop making new variants, people! That means stop spreading the virus

As long as the virus keeps spreading, new variants will inevitably and continually arise

And as long as new variants keep arising, there's greater and greater chance that the new variants would be sufficiently different enough from the original virus such that the vaccines are less effective on the new variants

Then there will come a point that the original vaccines are not effective anymore on the newest variants

That means, either new vaccines have to be continually be created to keep up with the continually arising new variants............. or stop spreading the virus as soon as possible and thus stop creating new variants in the first place

Which one is easier? Why would anyone want to keep making new variants?

It's not continuously mutating like flu

It is a flu and mutates like a flu. Have ya guys seen the Covid-19 mutation tree yet?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Tree_diagram_of_Pango_lineages_of_SARS-CoV-2.svg

Each one of those tiny lines is a variant. People only hear about the major variants because those are the significant ones, but in the meantime, the virus keeps mutating. The more it spreads, the more it replicates, the more it mutates to even more variants. Most variants are insignificant, but every variant could lead to significant new variants down the line

It may take a few years for a worldwide herd immunity, but we will likely get there.

We'll get there faster using vaccines. And the faster we get there, the better

Because the more time we take to get there, the more millions of lives will be lost. (Remember, the Spanish Flu took down tens of millions of lives before it petered out. Who would want a repeat of that?)

7 ( +8 / -1 )

Get vaccinated people! It's not just for you!

I agree with this sentiment but just because you have been vaccinated doesn’t mean you cannot carry the virus and infect others. For those who wish to say that since they are vaccinated they are no longer part of the problem you should continue to follow the science. Wear a mask for the sake of others, social distance, stay at home as much as possible so as not to be the one carrying and spreading the disease although you are personally protected. Don’t be an arrogant carrier and spreader of death.

-5 ( +1 / -6 )

So Wolfpack, does this mean we should shutter all businesses, avoid all social contact, wear masks and live in fear because locking down is the only way out of this? Vaccinated or not, you're a carrier of death. Am I understanding your logic on this?

So get vaccinated, but go back to being in a state of panic and isolation because, well, it's a virus. The ends do not justify your means. Vaccination greatly reduces the seriousness of the virus with less complications and deaths. The reality is we are going to have to live with this. It will not magically disappear if we just lock our selves in and wear masks all the time.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/yes-vaccines-block-most-transmission-of-covid-19

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Being totally vaccinated, and with the high vaccination rate in the US, at this point, I really do not care or worry about any variants--unless it would affect someone like me.

So, let Japan fiddle away with their silly vaccination program, let Australia keep shutting down because people won't get vaccinated--let the rest of the world do what it wants. I'm safe, and I will be fine.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

The Delta variant actually seems less deadly, transmission is just it going round and not necessarily that it's doing anything to the host

This is factually inaccurate. The Delta variant is at least 50% more transmissible and affects younger healthy people. It’s COVID on steroids.

At certain time I have thought about the anti-vaccers “You know what? To hell with them let them get infected, get sick and die. The vast majority of them are conspiracy mongers anyway.”

The problem with that is that these knuckleheads will be a variant factory and eventually they will unleash something that our current vaccines can’t fight.

That this pandemic continues is not a result of government inaction, but a mixture of stupidity and selfishness.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Got vaccinated in the US, and so did millions of others, so no concern of the Delta variant there, and coming to Japan, still fear free. But I go back and forth quite frequently. People basically living normally in the US. The Delta variant will probably spread quite a bit here in Japan since the young people are not vaccinated and they are acting as if life is normal.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Trump made public health into a partisan issue. CPAC cheered it not hitting vaccination targets. Let that sink in. An organized “conservative” group cheered not hitting vacation goals.

Let the 3-bs talk their talk. The VAST majority of the public and the voting public sees him for what he so obviously is: a malignant cancer on the body politic.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

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